OXFAM ISSUE BRIEFING SEPTEMBER 2013

GROWING DISRUPTION:

Climate change, food, and the fight against hunger

www.oxfam.org

Pregnant mother Salma faces food shortages due to flooding in her village, Char Atra, in Bangladesh.

Photo: Dan Chung

This briefing paper explores how the failure to tackle climate change

threatens all aspects of food security – availability, access, utilisation,

and stability. The changing climate is already jeopardising gains in the

fight against hunger, and it looks set to worsen. It threatens the

production and distribution of food. It threatens people’s ability to

access food by undermining livelihoods and destabilising prices, and it

damages diets by harming human health and putting at risk the quality

of food produced. Finally, the paper sets out how these impacts can be

averted, through urgent action to avoid dangerous climate change,

address our broken food system, and strengthen its resilience.

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‘Climate change is not just an environmental issue. It is an all encompassing threat to health and security, sta-bility and prosperity, and our global food supply sys-tem. No nation, rich or poor, will escape its impact. And, as is increasingly clear, this impact is already being felt… Rising temperatures and changes to rainfall pat-terns are reducing harvests and increasing food and nutrition insecurity. As al-ways, this is felt most by the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.’

Kofi Annan, Oslo, November 2012

1. OVERVIEW:

A HOT WORLD IS A HUNGRY WORLD

Food security at risk

The world faces a real and imminent risk of major setbacks in efforts to

combat hunger because of climate change. That risk is not a remote future

threat. It is emerging today and will intensify over the coming decades.

Using the accepted four pillars of food security – availability, access,

utilisation, and stability – this issue brief draws on research and on Oxfam‟s

programme experience around the world to assess how climate change is

likely to disrupt each of these four elements.1 The paper sets out how climatic

instability in the form of more extreme and volatile weather is already

undermining food security. It also shows how in the absence of urgent action,

it will load far more significant challenges onto already stressed food

systems.

Box 1: Climate change and the four pillars of food security

Food security is achieved ‘when all people, at all times, have physical and

economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their

dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’.2

Availability: Both more extreme weather and slow-onset changes in the

climate (increasing temperatures and changing rainfall) will hit food production

and food distribution systems, reducing the amount, type, and quality of food

available for consumption.

Access: By increasing food prices and at the same time undermining people‟s

means of making a living, climate change threatens people‟s access to the

required type, quality, and quantity of food.

Utilisation: By affecting human health and jeopardising the quality, variety, and

even safety of food produced, climate change affects people‟s ability to benefit

nutritionally from consumed food.

Stability: By increasing shocks, stresses, and uncertainty around access to,

availability, and utilisation of food (as stated above), climate change threatens

people‟s ability to have access to adequate food at all times.

The climate is changing

Greenhouse gas emissions are changing the world‟s climate by trapping

heat, warming the oceans and the atmosphere, altering regional climates,

and creating increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather. The probability

of extreme weather events is increasing. The odds of an extremely hot

northern hemisphere summer were about one in 300 during the period 1951

to1980, but increased to nearly one in ten by 1981 to2010.3 If the remainder

of the 21st century unfolds like its first decade, we will soon experience

climate extremes well outside the boundaries of human experience, ever

since agriculture was first developed.

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Despite global recognition that warming must be kept below the critical 2°C

threshold, emissions are rising rapidly, and much higher levels of warming

are likely. The earth's atmosphere has just reached a carbon dioxide (CO2)

concentration of 400 parts per million for the first time in about three million

years. The last time levels were so high, global temperatures were 2–3°C

warmer than they are today, and sea levels were up to 25 metres higher.4

Poor people are most exposed

Climate change affects everyone, but developing countries will be hit harder

than developed countries and the world‟s most food-insecure regions will be

hit hardest of all.5 Although low-income countries in tropical and sub-tropical

regions contribute least to climate change, in future they are likely to endure

sharp changes in annual rainfall and climatic conditions that will put them at

risk of greater food insecurity, especially in Africa and South Asia.6

Already, food production and prices are being hit globally by extreme climate

events. Other climate impacts and climate change have also been shown to

be a key factor in disasters, such as the 2011 Horn of Africa drought.7

According to one estimate, climate change and its impacts on hunger and

communicable diseases are currently responsible for 400,000 deaths a year

in the world‟s poorest countries.8 The poorest people are bearing the brunt as

climate change exacerbates pre-existing conditions that make them more

exposed to the risk of food insecurity.

Today one person in eight goes to bed hungry. Analysis suggests that the

number of people at risk of hunger is projected to increase by 10–20 per cent

by 2050 as a result of climate change (Figure 1).9 It is estimated that this

could increase child malnutrition by 20 per cent relative to a world with no

climate change, eliminating the improvements that may otherwise have

occurred.10 Figure 1: Projected daily per capita calorie availability in 2050, with and without climate change

Source: G. Nelson et al. (2009). „With climate change‟ is an average of National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) forecasts.

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Climate change is transforming the hunger challenge

Those attending the World Food Summit in 1996, which came after nearly 30

years of progress in the fight against hunger, believed that food security was

attainable.11 For Oxfam and others, eradicating hunger is an achievable goal,

and one that must be underpinned by an assessment that hunger occurs not

because of the scarcity of food but because of inequalities and injustices in

the way that food is distributed.

However, climate change is transforming the nature of the hunger challenge

and, potentially, our ability to deal with it – and, alarmingly, it is happening at

the same time as global demand for food is increasing.

Without urgent action to reduce emissions and build resilience, climate

change will challenge the safety and security of the global food system and

with it the prospect of ensuring that everyone‟s basic human right to food can

be met. Our food system cannot cope with unmitigated climate change,

which could lead to a permanent increase in yield variability, excessive food

price volatility, and perpetual disruption to livelihoods that could leave many

poor countries and communities with potentially insuperable food security

challenges.

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2. FOOD AVAILABILITY

Adequate food availability is a precondition for sustained food security. As set

out in the sections below, climate change threatens food availability in two

main ways. First, production is being hit by increasing temperatures and

shifting rainfall patterns, which are expected to increasingly depress

agricultural yields in most countries.12 Production losses will also occur due

to a projected increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather

events, such as heatwaves, droughts, and floods. In addition, extreme

weather events are also likely to damage or destroy vital distribution and

transport infrastructure, with severe consequences for food supply chains

and availability of food at markets.

2.1 PRODUCTION HIT

Creeping declines in productivity

Climate change is a potent risk multiplier in agriculture. Whilst carbon

fertilisation and certain climatic changes could benefit some crops in some

regions of the world, its overall impacts are expected to be negative,

threatening global food security.13

Slow-onset changes, such as gradual increases in temperature and changing

rainfall patterns, are expected to intensify over the coming decades, putting

downward pressure on yields. However, these impacts are already being felt

today. Research indicates that global yields of maize and wheat over the past

three decades may already be 3.8 per cent and 5.5 per cent lower

respectively than they would have been without the effects of climate

change.14

Many studies have assessed the potential future impacts of climate change

on productivity, and while projections vary at the country level, globally they

point to Africa, South East Asia, and South Asia as being particularly

vulnerable to impacts on food security.15

In the tropics and sub-tropics in general, crop yields may fall by 10–20

per cent by 2050 because of climate change, and there are places

where yield losses may be even more severe (Figure 2).

Even with global warming of less than 2°C by the 2050s, total crop

production in sub-Saharan Africa could be reduced by 10 per cent.16

With higher levels of warming, countries in sub-Saharan Africa could

experience catastrophic declines in yield of 20–30 per cent by 2080.

According to one estimate, it could rise as high as 50 per cent in

Sudan and Senegal.17

Fish is a crucial source of protein for some three billion people, many

of whom live in developing countries.18 Recent research has shown

that tropical marine fish are on the move towards the poles, seeking

cooler waters as the oceans warm, and they are not being replaced

by new species.19

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Figure 2: Climate change could depress agricultural yields in most countries

by 2050

Source: C. Muller (2010) 20

Oxfam‟s work with smallholders in developing countries indicates that these

creeping, insidious changes in the seasons (such as longer, hotter dry

periods), shorter growing periods, and unpredictable rainfall patterns are

bewildering farmers, making it harder for them to know when best to sow,

cultivate, and harvest their crops.21

In the most vulnerable regions, research suggests 14.2 million

hectares could see a significant change in the length of growing

period due to climate change, with a potential population of around

400 million affected.22

A +4°C change in world temperatures could result in a massive

reduction in the length of the growing period in many parts of Africa,

including 20 per cent or more in some areas (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Variation in length of growing period in Africa to 2090 (%) in a +4°C

world

Source: P. Thornton (2010)23

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Production shocks

On top of the slow-onset changes set out above, climate change will increase

the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as heatwaves,

droughts, and floods, which can wipe out harvests. In March 2012, a special

report on extreme weather by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change (IPCC) warned of „unprecedented extreme weather and climate

events‟ in the future.24 The impacts of future extreme events on food

production cannot be forecast with precision. But many parts of the world

have seen new extreme – and ominous – weather records set in recent

years, with devastating consequences for food production. These events

offer a glimpse of potential future impacts:

In 2012 the US Midwest experienced its worst drought in 50 years, which reduced the expected maize crop by 25 per cent.25 This contributed to global maize prices rising by around 40 per cent.26 Drought in major wheat-producing countries such as Kazakhstan in the same year contributed to record wheat price increases of around 22 per cent.27 This left low-income, import-dependent countries such as Yemen – which imports 95 per cent of its consumed cereals – highly exposed.28

In the record-breaking drought in Yunnan, China, which lasted from October 2009 to May 2010, 2.1m hectares of crops and 450,000 hectares of forest and fruit trees suffered serious impacts. The direct economic losses to agriculture exceeded RMB 20bn (around $2.9bn).29

The drought in Russia in 2012 cut the grain harvest by nearly 25 per cent,30 causing domestic prices of grain and bread to rocket. Losses caused by this drought have been estimated at between £294m and £937m.31 Oxfam research shows that the cumulative effects of the 2010 and 2012 droughts in Russia have driven many farmers into significant debt.32

2012 was the UK‟s second wettest year on record, and the wettest ever in England.33 UK wheat yields fell to their lowest levels in 20 years34 and the country had to import 2.5m tonnes of wheat.35

Box 2: Loss and damage in agriculture

„Loss and damage‟ is a concept used in the UN climate change negotiations,

which refers to the negative effects of climate change that adaptation will not

overcome. In terms of impacts on food, it includes unavoidable losses of crops,

fisheries, and livestock, as well as reduced productive capacity (sometimes

permanent) due to saltwater intrusion in coastal areas, desertification and

increased aridity, and extreme weather events. Loss and damage in agriculture

is not only felt in economic terms – it also affects food security and jeopardises

the right to food.

Many countries are already experiencing loss and damage, and as climate

change progresses the threat will intensify. The Mekong Delta in Viet Nam, for

example, which accounts for around 50 per cent of the country‟s agricultural

production, is at severe risk of saltwater intrusion. It has been estimated that a

sea-level rise of 30cm, which could occur as early as 2040, could result in the

loss of about 12 per cent of crop production.36

‘In 2010, we were not so bound by loans, we had fewer debts, but now [af-ter the 2012 drought] the situation is completely different. We had to take money from the Mafia and now that we go to bed, we are afraid they could cut our heads off or the bail-iffs could come and take everything from our homes. Today, we could basically declare our-selves bankrupt and close down the farm.’

Alexander D., Altai region, Russia

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2.2 DISTRIBUTION DISRUPTED

Even where food exists, extreme events can disrupt vital infrastructure,

meaning that food cannot reach markets and for consumers availability is

limited. Oxfam‟s programme and humanitarian work in climate-related

emergencies indicate that the effects on transport, storage, bridges, fuel

supplies, and other vital food-related infrastructure can in some instances be

a bigger constraint on availability, and a bigger driver of food price increases,

than impacts on food production.

A key lesson from Oxfam‟s work during the 2010–11 flooding in Colombia, for

example, was that the greatest problem was not an absolute lack of food but

rather interruptions in distribution due to infrastructure damage and transport

limitations. For instance, the price of green beans increased in every market

where they were sold – by more than 50 per cent in Bogotá and elsewhere –

due to supply interruptions caused by landslides on roads.37 The president of

the Colombian Society of Agricultural Producers, Rafael Mejía López, said at

the time that the food supply was sufficient but that transport infrastructure

was „a disaster‟.38

The effects of infrastructure disruption on food availability are widely

recognised, but they remain a “known unknown” in the context of

understanding potential future climate change impacts on food security. This

is an area of major vulnerability that urgently needs more attention and

research.39

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3. ACCESS TO FOOD

Adequate availability of food does not in itself guarantee that people have

enough to eat. People‟s ability to obtain food is also dependent on whether or

not they have sufficient resources to buy it at prices they can afford. Climate

change challenges people‟s access to food by increasing and destabilising

food prices, and by undermining livelihoods and people‟s ability to earn a

living and to provide food for themselves and their families.

3.1 INCREASING AND VOLATILE PRICES

World food prices are a useful barometer of how the effects of climate

change might play out within the food system. Food prices also have a major

bearing on hunger and nutrition because they influence the capacity of poor

people – and poor and highly import-dependent countries – to gain access to

calories and nutrients.

Food price spikes can be a matter of life and death to many people in

developing countries, who spend as much as 75 per cent of their incomes on

food.40 Even food-producing smallholder farmers are vulnerable to price

spikes because in most developing countries they are net buyers of food (an

estimated 73 per cent of smallholders in Ethiopia and 74 per cent in India, for

example).41

As the 2012 drought in the USA shows, weather-related shocks, especially in

major crop-exporting countries, can drive up prices precipitously in the short

term. Shocks can also trigger responses affecting both producer and

consumer countries, such as an export ban in the case of the Russian

drought in 2010, which escalate prices further. The strain that price spikes

have put on the global food system in recent years has aggravated political

instability and social strife in many parts of the world.42

Average price of staple foods set to rise

Oxfam commissioned research from the UK‟s Institute of Development

Studies explored a range of food price scenarios for 2030 using international

trade models. This found that, in the absence of urgent and aggressive action

to tackle global warming, the average price of staple foods could more than

double in the next 20 years compared with 2010 trend prices – with up to half

of the increase caused by climate change (changing mean temperatures and

rainfall patterns).43 Analysis of the long-term impacts of climate change by

the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and others also

indicates that food price rises of this magnitude are a likely corollary of rising

temperatures and changing rainfall patterns.44

The average price of staple foods could more than double in the next 20 years – with up to half of the increase caused by climate change

‘There are reasons to expect more frequent food price spikes, given that it will be more common to see [weather] conditions that are considered extreme.’

David Lobell, Assistant Professor of Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford University

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Source: D. Willenbockel (2012)

Figure 4: Predicted impact of climate change on world market food export

prices to 2030

Source: D. Willenbockel (2011)

Food price spikes set to increase

On their own, these structural price rises could spell disaster for many people

living in poverty – but they represent only baseline price increases. On top of

baseline increases, additional research recently commissioned by Oxfam

offers a snapshot of how extreme weather events could further compound

the impact on prices.45 This modelling suggests that in 2030 one or more

extreme events in a single year could bring about price spikes of a magnitude

comparable to two decades of projected long-run price increases (Figure

5).46 This could have the effect, for example, of increasing domestic maize

prices in Central American and Andean maize-importing countries by more

than 80 per cent.47

Figure 5: Modelled price impacts of extreme weather event scenarios in 2030

Extreme weather events in a single year could bring about price spikes of comparable magnitude to two dec-ades of projected long-run price increases.

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‘Too much rain and too much sun make the prawns get sick easily. The owner lost the prawns so I lost my job. Earlier this year my wife and eldest daughter had to go to Ho Chi Minh City to find jobs because I don’t get a regular in-come.’ Nguyen Thanh Nhan, 39, Viet Nam

3.2 UNDERMINING LIVELIHOODS

The effects of price rises cannot be viewed in isolation. Climate change also

disrupts livelihoods and people‟s capacity to earn a living and to provide food

for themselves and their families.

Box 3: Brutal heatwave ruins livelihoods in parts of Pakistan

Zulekhan Mumtaz has seen her livelihood as a seller of camel milk wrecked

because of a severe heatwave that left Pakistan sweltering for three weeks in

May 2013 with temperatures of up to 51ºC.

„My customers say they can no longer buy spoilt milk and squander their

money,‟ the 31-year-old said. „How can I buy fodder for the camel and food for

my two children if the heatwave damages my milk?‟.

She said that even her camel had become sick because of frequent bouts of

dehydration and its milk capacity had dropped by 70 per cent. Such extreme

temperatures make almost every function of daily life a near-intolerable struggle

– including, for millions of people, trying to earn a daily living. Residents in most

cities, towns, and villages have been forced to stay indoors, leaving typically

bustling shopping areas and business centres closed, and roads and highways

deserted between 10am and 6pm.48

Increasing work burden and insecurity

Climatic uncertainty can lead farmers to try to plant more and more often,

which increases the work burden – especially for women – and costs due to

the need to buy more seeds or hire labour.49 Rising temperatures and

humidity also have direct effects on people‟s ability to work outdoors for long

periods.50

Box 4: Coffee-based livelihoods at risk in Uganda and Central America

Coffee is a major cash crop in Uganda. Recent research by Oxfam shows that

the 500,000 smallholder farmers who produce 90 per cent of the crop could

have their already vulnerable livelihoods made even more precarious by climate

change. Interviews with coffee farmers in the Rwenzori Mountains found that

many are already witnessing a changing and less predictable climate, with

longer droughts as well as shorter and more erratic rains. Pests and plant

diseases are increasing. Climate change mapping shows that areas suitable for

growing Arabica coffee could diminish drastically in the future, incurring

economic losses that could amount to tens of millions of dollars annually and

sinking smallholder farmers further into poverty and increased risk of hunger.51

In Central America, la roya coffee rust is attacking Arabica coffee plants at ever

higher altitudes as the climate warms.52

According to the International Coffee

Organization, m

‘The temperature is changed greatly. Summer times never used to be so hot five years back, but this year we can hardly work on the fields in the morning. It is so hot that we get blisters all over our bodies’.

Seken Ali, Pangsha, Rajbari, Bangladesh

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Increasing burden on women

Women are especially vulnerable to climate change. Worldwide, women do

the bulk of farm work, so they have to work harder and for longer in hotter

conditions.54 Existing gender inequities may be worsened as climate change

increases.

For example, Oxfam field surveys of communities in Nepal shows how

disruption to the monsoons creates further pressure on men to migrate,

leaving women alone to look after their families.55 As physical labour is one of

the few resources that women control, they have to undertake more daily

waged labour, which is often extremely onerous and pays less than men‟s

work. The increasing burden of work for women has knock-on effects on their

time and energy to look after their children and run the care economy, which

impacts on the nutritional status of children. As water sources dry up, they

must travel further for longer to get water. Girls, especially, may be pulled out

of school to help keep the household running.56

Furthermore, it is often the case that within the household women and girls,

who prepare the food, are the last to eat, giving priority to feeding men and

boys first. When there is less to eat, women can fall into a downward spiral of

poor diet, poor health, and loss of strength and energy.57

It is also important to recognise that climate change is happening at the same

time as vulnerabilities are changing drastically with changes in demography.

Along with population increases, declining fertility rates and increasing

survival at older ages have led to ageing populations. Women account for the

majority of older persons – a phenomenon referred to as „the feminisation of

ageing‟, particularly in rural areas58

Increasing risk of food crises

Of the three billion people who live in rural areas in developing countries, 2.5

billion are involved in agriculture, and 1.5 billion live in small farmer

households.59 Many are perilously exposed to changes in the climate,

meaning that too much rain, or too little, can be the difference between

having enough food or living in hunger. When a weather event drives local or

regional price spikes, people living in poverty often face a double shock:

having to cope with higher prices at a time when the direct effects of the

weather may also have depleted their assets, destroyed their crops, or

stripped them of their livelihood.

The 2011 emergency in the Horn of Africa and the 2012 Sahel food crisis

show how this toxic mix can bring about hunger on a massive scale.

Pastoralists and small-scale subsistence farmers were hit hard in both

regions, where the loss of livestock and crops reduced the amount of food

available. It also drastically reduced the value of their assets, so that they

could not afford to buy food either.

Successive droughts in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa expose the hardship

of cumulative shocks and slow-onset changes in the climate, which erode

resilience and people‟s capacity to recover from one crisis to the next.

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The devastating 2010 mega-flood in Pakistan destroyed over 570,000

hectares of cropland in Punjab and affected more than 20 million people. It

caused a massive 75 per cent reduction in income across all households

affected, primarily because of the destruction of crops and animals.60 80 per

cent of food reserves were lost.61 Recently the World Food Programme

warned that three consecutive years of floods mean that about half of

Pakistan's population still do not have secure access to enough food (up from

a little over one-third a decade ago).62

Box 5: 2011 East Africa food crisis made more likely because of climate

change

Droughts in East Africa have increased in frequency in recent years, occurring

in 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2011.63

The 2011 drought affected over 13 million

people and led to a famine in Somalia that killed over a quarter of a million

people64

– and it was partly caused by climate change, according to a recent

climate attribution study.65

Climatologists at the Met Office Hadley Centre in

Exeter, UK, found that climate change is likely to have increased the risk of the

drought occurring.66

In East Africa, no food crisis can ever be attributed to a single

causal factor. But drought is a trigger and this is the first occasion that a portion

of the blame for a humanitarian crisis has been attributed to climate change.

Uncertainty remains over the precise future impacts of climate change on the

East Africa region, but evidence points to climate change continuing to have

significant adverse impacts on food security.

Cities becoming climate change hotspots

Crowded cities are particularly vulnerable to climate shocks, especially

storms, floods, and heatwaves.67 Floods can inundate the myriad small

enterprises and street stalls that sustain livelihoods in low-lying, low-income

areas. Low-income communities are disproportionately affected by such

events and may also receive the least help in their aftermath, as was the

case when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.68

Urban dwellers purchase nearly all of their food. For them, food security

depends on being able to earn enough money to buy food, and on food being

available at affordable prices. Often one or the other – or both – does not

happen, as was seen in Bogotá in 2010 and 2011.69 Low-income urban

residents living in slums are particularly vulnerable because they rarely have

the facilities to store food.70 High prices exacerbated or caused by weather-

related disasters can be calamitous for those on low and irregular incomes,

who may suddenly be laid off following a flood or an economic crash.

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4. FOOD UTILISATION

„Utilisation‟ is the way in which the body makes the most of the nutrients in

food. There are at least two routes by which climate change can undermine

successful utilisation of food. One is through impacts on the quality and

safety of food itself, which undermine its nutritional benefit. Another is by

jeopardising people‟s health, as an unhealthy person is less able to digest

food thoroughly and obtain maximum goodness from it.

Threats to the quality and safety of food

Crops are vulnerable to extreme heat: a few days of extreme temperatures

can cause physiological damage and crop failure. A new study estimates that

within about 20 years, 31 per cent of the global harvested area of maize, 16

per cent of all rice, and 11 per cent of all wheat could be exposed to at least

five days per year of extreme temperatures above the critical thresholds for

these crops. For maize, this will rise to 44 per cent of the global harvested

area exposed by the 2050s.71 Higher average temperatures can cause crops

to mature more quickly, but if the right levels of nutrients or water are not

available during the critical growing period, growth can go into stems rather

than the grain or fruit, thereby reducing yields and food quality.

„Carbon fertilisation‟ increases the productivity of most crops, especially

tubers72 like potato, but the effects will vary by region and models may

exaggerate the benefits compared with what actually happens in the field.73

Elevated carbon levels can actually reduce the protein concentration of

wheat, barley, rice, and potato.74 High heat and humidity also affect livestock

health and output; animals eat less, put on less weight, reproduce less, and

produce less milk or fewer eggs.

Hotter conditions are also likely to increase crop contamination by poisonous

fungal mycotoxins. Around a quarter of the global annual maize crop is

already contaminated with mycotoxins, which are dangerous to human health

and responsible for substantial harvest losses.75

Threats to human health

Extreme weather jeopardises human health, both immediately and directly

through injuries and trauma and also indirectly and over the longer term by

contaminating water supplies and increasing disease.76 Climate change

impacts on sanitation systems and access to clean drinking water, especially

in urban areas, may be particularly serious.77 Sickness impedes a person‟s

ability to digest food thoroughly and obtain maximum benefit from it.

Tragically, children are the hardest hit: in particular, climate change is

intensifying the threat from the three biggest killers of children – diarrhoea,

malnutrition, and malaria.78

People‟s observations of how climates are changing and their first-hand

experiences of shocks, extremes, uncertainties, and unusual events may

also bring about psychological distress. Fear, anxiety, sleeplessness, loss of

confidence, lethargy, and depression may all occur, which in turn inhibit

people‟s capacity to produce or obtain food.79

‘Whenever it rains at night, my whole family has no peace of mind, we can hardly sleep…That night our family lost everything. I don’t know what climate change is all about – just that the weather is getting worse and worse’

E Mun Mun Tie, rice farmer, survivor of a landslide, Si-chuan, China

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5. BUILDING A RESILIENT FOOD SYSTEM: RECOMMENDATIONS

The climate change impacts on food security set out in this brief are not

inevitable. It is within our power to ensure that every person‟s right to food is

realised. But a dramatic shift in political ambition and a significant scale-up in

resources are urgently needed to avoid dangerous climate change, address

our broken food system, and strengthen its resilience.

Crucially, ensuring the long-term prospects for eradicating hunger

means cutting emissions, and fast. Our food system cannot cope with

unmitigated climate change and urgent action is needed to keep global

temperature rises within safe levels. Deep cuts in emissions by 2020 are

needed and require government and private sector action to:

Decarbonise our global energy system by increasing investment in

clean energy (wind and solar) and significantly curbing use of, and

investment in, fossil fuel use (gas, oil, coal), which globally account

for around two-thirds of emissions, principally CO2;80

Reduce emissions equitably from industrial agriculture, which is a

major driver of the approximately one third of global emissions not

produced by the energy system, both from GHGs released directly

and as the principal driver of emissions released through

deforestation.81

Urgent action is needed to build the resilience of the food system, and

that of the people who depend on it, to deal with existing climate

impacts and further changes to the climate that are forecast. Even at

today„s level of 0.8°C of warming, food production, prices, and livelihoods are

already being hit globally by extreme climate events and other climate

impacts. Even if we cut emissions now, some further changes to the climate

are unavoidable due to the extent of the greenhouse gases already released

into the atmosphere. Building resilience requires urgent action, including to:

Establish and implement legislative and constitutional provisions in

developing countries that guarantee the right to food for all in the face

of climate change, including secure access to land and water;

Address extreme inequalities, both within and between countries,

which are a major underlying cause of hunger that will be

exacerbated by climate change;82

Deliver on promises of adaptation support to the poorest people by

significantly scaling up climate finance now, to reach at least 50% of

total public climate finance, on a path towards the commitment to

mobilise $100bn per year by 2020;

Secure new commitments at the UNFCCC to address adaptation and

loss and damage, including the establishment of a new international

mechanism on loss and damage and an agreement that support for

adaptation should be linked to the level of global mitigation

commitments;

Reverse decades of under-investment in small-scale, environmentally

sustainable, and resilient agriculture to help farmers, especially

women, increase the local availability of food and safeguard the

resilience of ecosystems on which they rely;

‘There is a commitment to climate change of 20 to 30 years into the future as a result of past emissions of greenhouse gases that necessitates immediate adaptation actions to address global food insecurity over the next two to three decades.’

T. Wheeler and J. von Braun (2013) „Climate change impacts on global food security‟

16

Scale up disaster risk reduction (DRR) efforts and invest in early

warning systems to increase preparedness for when weather shocks

strike;

Scale up humanitarian response to tackle the rising number of

weather-related food crises;

Scale up food reserves and social protection measures to reduce

vulnerability and help people cope with recurrent shocks.

17

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1 FAO (2006) Food Security Policy Brief. ftp://ftp.fao.org/es/ESA/policybriefs/pb_02.pdf

2 World Food Summit, Rome Declaration on World Food Security (1996).

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Change‟, NASA, Goddard Institute of Space Studies. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_17/

4 IPCC (2007) „Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis‟, chapter

6.3.2 „What does the record of the mid-Pliocene show?‟ http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-3-2.html

5 M. Parry et al. (2009) „Climate Change and Hunger: Responding to the Challenge‟, World Food

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9 G. Nelson et al. (2009) op. cit.

10 Ibid.

11 http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/w3613e/w3613e00.HTM

12 D. Lobell et al. (2011) „Climate trends and global crop production since 1980‟, Science, May

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G. Nelson et al. (2009) op. cit. 14

D. Lobell et al. (2011) op. cit. 15

Many studies have used climate scenario model outcomes in crop growth simulation models to assess potential impacts on yields, including G. Nelson et al. (2010) „Food Security, Farming, and Climate Change to 2050: Scenarios, Results, Policy Options‟, IFPRI.

16 World Bank (2013) „Turn Down the Heat: Climate extremes, regional impacts and the case for

resilience – Executive Summary‟. http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2013/06/14/000333037_20130614104709/Rendered/PDF/784220WP0Engli0D0CONF0to0June019090.pdf

17 W. Cline (2007) „Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country‟, Center for

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M.D. Smith et al, „Sustainability and Global Seafood‟, Science, 12 February 2010, vol. 327, no 5967, pp 784-786.

19 S.C. Doney (ed) (2012) „Climate change impacts on marine ecosystems‟, Annual Review of

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C. Muller (2010) „Climate Change Impacts on Agricultural Yields‟, background note to the „World Development Report 2010‟. The figure shows the projected percentage change in yields of 11 major crops (wheat, rice, maize, millet, field pea, sugar beet, sweet potato, soy-bean, groundnut, sunflower, and rapeseed) from 2046 to 2055, compared with 1996–2005. The yield-change values are the mean of three emission scenarios across five global climate models, assuming no CO2 fertilization (a possible boost to plant growth and water-use effi-ciency from higher ambient CO2 concentrations). Large negative yield impacts are projected in many areas that are highly dependent on agriculture.

21 S. Jennings and J. Magrath (2009) „What Happened to the Seasons?‟ Oxfam GB.

22 The High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition report on „Food security and

Climate Change‟ (2012) citing P. Ericksen et al. (2011) „Mapping Hotspots of Climate Change and Food Insecurity in the Global Tropics‟, CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) Report No. 5.

23 P. Thornton (2010) „Agriculture and food systems in sub-Saharan Africa in a 4°C+ world‟,

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 29 November 2010. 24

IPCC (2012) „Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation‟, A Special Report of Working Groups I and II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

25 Box 1.1 OECD/FAO Agricultural Outlook 2013 http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-

Management/oecd/agriculture-and-food/oecd-fao-agricultural-outlook-2013_agr_outlook-2013-en

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26

Box 1.1, OECD/FAO Agricultural Outlook, ibid. 27

Box 1.1, OECD/FAO Agricultural Outlook 2013, ibid.

28 See e.g. FAO consolidated appeal, 2012:

http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/emergencies/docs/CAP_2012_Yemen.pdf 29

J.M.Lu et al. (2012) „The influence of the Madden-Julian Oscillation activity anomalies on Yunnan‟s extreme drought of 2009–2010‟, Science China Earth Sciences, January 2012, vol. 55 No.1. The drought also affected over 25 million people.

30 ROSSTAT (Russian Federation Federal State Statistics Service), cited in „After the Drought:

Russian farmers speak about the struggle they faced in 2012 and the challenges of adapting to extreme weather events‟, Oxfam (2013, forthcoming). Wheat prices fell by 19% (OECD/FAO Agricultural Outlook, op.cit).

31 „After the Drought‟, op. cit.

32 Ibid.

33 UK Met Office. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2013/2012-weather-statistics

34 See National Farmers‟ Union survey of arable members published in October 2012.

http://www.nfuonline.com 35

Peter Kendall, UK National Farmers‟ Union President, warned that extreme weather “is get-ting much more difficult to manage” and is the greatest threat to the UK‟s agriculture and food supplies. See UK newspaper The Guardian, 28 July 2013. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/28/weather-heatwaves-climate-change-uk-farming Although recent climate change attribution studies have not found that anthropogenic forcers made the extreme wet weather in the UK in 2012 more likely, the extent of the crop damage demonstrates the vulnerability of agriculture in developed countries to extreme weather.

36 World Bank (2013) Turn Down the Heat: Climate extremes, regional impacts and the case for

resilience – Executive Summary, p. 7 http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2013/06/14/000333037_20130614104709/Rendered/PDF/784220WP0Engli0D0CONF0to0June019090.pdf

37 From the monthly press bulletin of the Colombian national agricultural price information service

(CCI), December 2010. www.cci.org.co/cci/cci_x/datos/Canasta/2010/CanastaDic2010.pdf 38

From an article in América Economía, 28 April 2011. www.americaeconomia.com/politica-sociedad/mundo/colombia-gobierno-no-preve-desabastecimiento-de-alimentos-por-ola-invernal

39 S.J. Vermuelen, B.Campbell, and J. Ingram (2012) „Climate change and food systems‟, Annual

Review of Environment and Resources 37:195-222. http://www.fcrn.org.uk/research-library/agriculture/climate-change-and-food-systems

40 M. Ivanic and W. Martin (2008) „The Implications of Higher Global Food Prices for Poverty in

Low-Income Countries‟, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper. 41

A. de Janvry and E. Sadoulet (2011) „Subsistence farming as a safety net for food-price shocks‟, Development in Practice, 21:4-5, 472-480.

42 Statistical analysis by the IMF found that increases in international food prices lead to increasing

risk of riots and civil conflict in low-income countries. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2011/wp1162.pdf.

See also analysis of international food prices and political instability, which indicates a food price threshold above which protests become more likely. http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.2455

43 D. Willenbockel (2011) „Exploring Food Price Scenarios Towards 2030 with a Global Multi-

Region Model‟, Oxfam research report. 44

G. Nelson et al. (2010) „Food Security, Farming, and Climate Change to 2050‟, op. cit. 45

D. Willenbockel (2012) „Extreme Weather Events and Crop Price Spikes in a Changing Climate: Illustrative Global Simulation Scenarios‟, Oxfam research report.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.; and see T. Carty (2012) „Extreme Weather, Extreme Prices: The costs of feeding a

warming world‟, Oxfam. 48

Reported by Thomson Reuters Foundation, 4 June 2013. http://www.trust.org/item/20130604105605-6fcrq

49 See, for example, J. Magrath (2008) „Turning Up The Heat: Climate change and poverty in

Uganda‟, Oxfam. 50

S. Jennings and J. Magrath (2009), op. cit.; and A. Renton (2009) „Suffering the Science: Climate change, people and poverty‟, Oxfam.

51 L. Jassogne et al. (2013) „The Impacts of Climate Change on Coffee in Uganda: Lessons from a

19

case study in the Rwenzori Mountains‟, Oxfam.

52 „The threatening march of coffee rust‟, Burlington Free Press, 22 June 2013.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20130623/GREEN01/306230013/The-threatening-march-coffee-rust?nclick_check=1

53 International Coffee Organization (2013) „Report on the outbreak of coffee leaf rust in Central

America and action plan to combat the pest‟, 13 May 2013. http://dev.ico.org/documents/cy2012-13/ed-2157e-report-clr.pdf

54 See, for example, Mary Robinson Foundation Climate Justice (2012) „The Gender Dimensions

of Food and Nutrition Security in the Context of Climate Change in Uganda‟, policy brief. 55

Oxfam (2009) „Even the Himalayas Have Stopped Smiling: Climate change, poverty and adaptation in Nepal‟, Oxfam research report.

56 Ibid.

57 S. Chant (ed.) (2010) The International Handbook of Gender and Poverty: Concepts, research,

policy, quoted in C. Tacoli, B. Bukhari, and S. Fisher (2013) „Urban Poverty, Food Security and Climate Change‟, IIED Human Settlements Working Paper 37.

58 UNFPA/HelpAge International (2012) „Ageing in the Twenty-First Century: A celebration and a

challenge‟. 59

World Bank (2008) „World Development Report 2008‟, Washington DC. 60

World Health Organization, Ministry of Health, and John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (2011) „Pakistan Floods 2010: Impact Assessment‟.

61 T.D. Kirsch, C. Wadhwani, L. Sauer, S. Doocy, and C. Catlett (2012) „Impact of the 2010

Pakistan Floods on Rural and Urban Populations at Six Months‟, PLOS Currents: Disasters, August 2012. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3441151/

62 EM-DAT/CRED cited in WMO, „The Global Climate 2001–2010, a decade of climate extremes‟

http://library.wmo.int/opac/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=15110 and Pakistan newspaper Daily Asia report, 24 June 2013 (no website).

63 R. Bailey (2013) „Managing Famine Risk: Linking early warning to early action‟, Chatham

House. 64

UN News Centre (2013) „Somalia famine killed nearly 260,000 people, half of them children – reports UN‟, 2 May 2013. www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=44811#.Uf0it9Kmh-o

65 The drought affected 13 million people, as set out in D. Hillier and B. Dempsey (2012) „A

Dangerous Delay‟, Oxfam and Save the Children; Climate attribution study: F.C. Lott, C.N. Christidis, and P.A. Stott (2013) op. cit.

66 F.C.Lott, C.N. Christidis, and P.A. Stott (2013) op. cit.

67 C. Tacoli et al. (2013) op. cit.

68 R. Bullard and B. Wright (2012) The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the government

response to disaster endangers African American communities, NYU Press; and Oxfam America (2006) „Forgotten Communities, Unmet Promises‟.

69 CCI and America Economica articles, op. cit.

70 C Tacoli et al. (2013) op. cit.

71 S.M. Gourdji, A.M. Sibley, and D.B. Lobell (2013) „Global crop exposure to critical high

temperatures in the reproductive period: historical trends and future projections‟, Environmental Research Letters, vol. 8, no. 2.

72 J.M.McGrath and D.Lobell (2013), „Regional disparities in the CO2 fertilization effect and

implications for crop yields‟, Environmental Research Letters 8 014054, http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/1/014054/article

73 T. Wheeler and J. von Braun (2013) „Climate change impacts on global food security‟, Science

341, 508. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6145/508.abstract 74

D.R. Taub, B. Miller, and H. Allen (2008) „Effects of elevated CO2 on the protein concentra-tion of food crops: a meta-analysis‟, Global Change Biology 14:565–75.

75 S. Vermuelen et al., op. cit.

76 T. Wheeler and J. von Braun, op. cit.

77 Recent Oxfam-led research for DFID has identified urban sanitation as the biggest challenge in

the global water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector. See Humanitarian Innovation Fund (2013) „Gap Analysis in Emergency WASH‟, July 2013, http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/gap-analysis-in-emergency-water-sanitation-and-hygiene-promotion-300094.

78 UNICEF UK (2013) „Climate Change, Food Systems and Children: A case for greater action‟.

79 S. Jennings and J. Magrath, (2009) op. cit.; and A. Renton (2009) „Suffering the Science‟, op.

cit.

20

80

Approximate breakdown of global greenhouse gas emissions is 65% energy-releated and 35% non-energy related. See for example: Stern Review breakdown using data drawn from World Resource Institute Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (Figure 1) http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/4/3/Executive_Summary.pdf

81 Ibid. for breakdown of energy and non-energy related ghg emissions.

See S.J. Vermeulen et al. (2012) op.cit. for an analysis of agriculture and the food sectors share of global emissions.

82 Providing the additional calories needed by the 13 per cent of the world's population facing

hunger would require just 3 per cent of the current global food supply. Calculation by Oxfam, arrived at by dividing the depth of the food deficit (per capita kcal deficit x global population) by the total food supply (per capita global food supply x global population). Sources: http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/ess-fs/fs-data/ess-fadata/en/ (accessed 20 August) and http://faostat3.fao.org/home/index.html#DOWNLOAD

21

© Oxfam International September 2013

This paper was written by Tracy Carty and John Magrath. Oxfam acknowledges the

assistance of many people in its production with particular thanks to Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva,

Tim Gore, Antonio Hill, Duncan Green, Richard King, Martin Walsh, Eric Hazard, Heather

Coleman and Chris Funk (Research Geographer, U.S. Geological Survey) in its production. It

is part of a series of papers written to inform public debate on development and humanitarian

policy issues.

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